The present invention generally relates to an illusion apparatus, and more particularly, to an apparatus for creating the illusion that an object placed inside a chamber has disappeared.
Magic tricks have been around since the beginning of time and magicians, both professional and novice, have used various apparatus to trick and dazzle audiences. One apparatus in particular, commonly known as the magic drawer box, has been a favorite among magicians and audiences alike. The magic drawer box is an apparatus where the magician places an object in an open drawer, then closes the drawer and says a few magic words and upon subsequently opening the drawer, the object is gone and the drawer is empty. Thus, giving the illusion that the magician has magically made the object disappear. Continuing on, the magician closes the drawer box, saying some more magic words, and upon opening the drawer the original object reappears within the drawer. Magicians have performed such tricks with the aid of many devices such as drawer boxes, chest of drawers, and variations such as top hats.
The various apparatus of the prior art have required the magician to use sleight-of-hand techniques in manipulating the apparatus to activate a secret compartment by pressing a hidden button or switch to actuate a lever that engages an outer drawer and allows the magician to pull out an inner drawer that is either empty or has a different object from that originally placed in the drawer. Giving the illusion of either disappearance or transformation of the original object. The magician can then close the drawer and disengage the lever by once again pressing the button or switch to disengage the outer drawer and pull the drawer out once again to have the original object reappear.
Typically prior art devices require the user to activate a mechanism to lock one of the drawers to prevent both drawers from coming out when only one drawer is desired to be extracted. This requires practice and skill in sleight-of-hand techniques to activate the locking mechanism without anyone noticing.
Accordingly, there is a substantial need in the art for improved devices that are inexpensive to manufacture and make the performance of various magic tricks more easy to master and perform for both the professional and novice magicians and stage performers.
The present invention addresses the deficiencies in the prior art by providing an automatically activated hidden compartment apparatus that can be used for the performance of magic tricks and can be utilized for other less xe2x80x9cmagicalxe2x80x9d yet still novel applications such as compact disc (CD) and digital video disc (DVD) cases.